michel bauwens

The best way to understand the P2P model is interpreted not as an elimination of competition in favor of cooperation, but as a new arrangement between these two aspirations of human beings as individuals assert / create links and live in society.

4:29 – all kinds of collab – consumption is one – mutualize physical resources, you have to share knowledge as common good – crowdsourcing – not collabing because you compete with logo.. c.. fb – sharing but not constructing something in common..

7 min – sharing vs cheating – maybe they were sharing.. when we thought they were cheating

low hanging fruit – knowledge and software code… making physical is more demanding.. how to move from immaterial peer production to material peer production… what if we do this with money, machinery, energy..

10 min – talking about a commons – a post- capitalist system (making things to make a profit)

These organisations are successful symbolic transmutations of the city, bringing to the negotiating table former drug dealers, the police, the government, bankers, the media and the university. With strategies at once intuitive and paradoxical, they represent transitional experiences that shun the ‘movement’ of drug trafficking culture in the slums and become social and cultural movements that point to a new form of ‘social corporation’ while hacking the socio-cultural discourse of big enterprises, government and media. They may occasionally be used by corporations but proceed through invention, hits and misses, creating possibilities for the appearance of new social actors and movements.

Once we understand that favelas are part of the city, we can also understand that they are historical formations and will eventually be deemed similar to Middle Age citadels – archives and living environments of a phase of capitalism. These lives- territories are exploding beyond their boundaries and might one day overtake the entire city with their inventions: a Favela-City. As AfroReggae founder Jose ́ Ju ́nior says ‘it is the elite which is living in a ghetto’.

The city, says Antonio Negri, is the new ‘factory’. The time of work is intermingled with the time of life. Work is no longer dead and characterised by automaticity but rather a living ‘life-work’. In this context, the School should no longer prepare for life, but become life itself. Thus, we see the booming of initiatives in non-formal education, free schools and universities, a demand for education and training in Pontos de Cultura and Pontos de M ́ıdia, with autonomy and freedom as principles for a revolution/mutation in flux that is already under way.

New challenges (such as security, difficulties in shared management, horizontality of relations) arise in this radical model of sharing and common funding, but having free time (collectively paid for), not having to ‘sell’ one’s time for food, clothing and lodging means having a minimal standard of sustainable life. This is not to be confused with ‘working for free’ and does not mean a minimal ‘income’ or ‘grant’. It means another kind of economy, a different horizon of collective agreements for the invention of worlds. Banco do Comum can be the basis for a new ‘life economics’.

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on commons:

what people are seeking.. ways/skills to facilitate collective intelligence.. not just people to people.. but the room/group

18:45 – address youth – find passion/talent/needs of others – out of those comes a commons activity – outside of capital, think different about the construction of value of people in a commons world

via Silke – controlling info is done to control power.. commons are challenging power.. so not that keen at looking at changing sides of fear – phrase from Carolina..

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nov 2013:

third revolution of human production

1. coercion – do it or you die – slavery et al

2. capitalism – do it for money/exchange

3. passion –

Young people are building their identity based on their contribution to this common projects. So more and more identity is going away from “I am working for IBM” to “I am doing Linux”. It is the combination of their engagements which creates a reputation, association networks and their happiness in life. I have seen that many times, for example in Amsterdam.

They are not just victims of job insecurity, they also need it in a way because they want to be engaged in their passionate projects. This is what gives meaning to their lives and this is why we have a new culture and why we are building all these new alternatives.

this is ‘class struggle 3.0’, between user communities and platform owners, between value creators and value realizers.

Real Commons-based peer production is a bit different. If you are a hacker or a developer you love Linux because this is how you want to work. If your knowledge works you need to share it, you need to build on other people’s ideas and cooperation. This is why all of this was created. Richard Stallman created a free software because he had read a software for printing machines and some guy at the university had told him: “This is ours” and slapped a copyright on it so he could no longer use his own code. It is out of this frustration that is known to every knowledge worker, that the need for openness originates. Here the difference is that as a company you use that code but to what degree does that allow us to continue developing the code? The key conflict in a system where you have entrepreneurial coalition, a foundation and a community is to what degree you can protect the autonomy of the community while at the same time enabling an economic system to grow around it. I think this is an argument about sustainability.

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looking back at 2013:

By 2013, everyone ‘got’ the Commons in one way or another, and was interested not just in mere dialogue, but in strategizing for social change.

There were also some less positive developments. One is the cooptation of the p2p concept by mere marketplaces.

his open letter to the pope for just that.. empty monestaries into maker spaces…

Why I wrote an Open Letter to Pope Francis

key roles church played in transition times

mutualization of immaterial and material resources

monestary itself mutualized to be used by whole community

new social contract – feudalism – compromise as a basis for the next 3 centuries.. thriving civilization – 1st industrial revolution

role of church – to soften the feudal system… by being the moral economy

lend money to poor at 0 usury raters

7 min – infinite growth as a cancer on the planet..

8 min – mutualization of immaterial (open source) and material (maker spaces) – light global heavy local – very similar to change that happened at end of roman empire

9:45 – visited: taking over an abandoned church… on one hand move of young people yearning to make a change… to share knowledge and mutualize means of production.. on other hand.. many beautiful buildings being sold to market to make hotels/discos… given real estate crises if catholic church would open up this spaces and make them available.. for community… meaningful co-working.. in harmony with original meaning of these buildings.. inspired by the common good

I write to you as a cultural Catholic moved by admiration for the Christian values and how they have been embodied by social change activists such as Ivan Illich, E.F. Schumacher, Paulo Freire, and profound and provocative thinkers such as Marshall McLuhan and Bruno Latour.

[..]

We presently live in a system which believes natural resources are infinite, and we are destroying the very eco-systems on which we depend; and the same system believes that knowledge that could benefit humanity should be restricted and kept artificially scarce, through Intellectual Property restrictions that slow down innovation, hide solutions until they are believed to be profitable, and sell vital medicines at inflated prices, amongst many other issues.

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The Catholic Church, despite the difficulties due to secularization in Western countries, still has many vital resources. Sometimes, these resources are sold to the marketplace, which may use these in inappropriate ways, such as for examples using abandoned Churches and Monasteries for commercial purposes, for hotels and entertainment venues, but also including sometimes directly related to real-estate speculation.

At the same time, the younger generations of people, and I believe we have a beautiful generation that is concerned and engaged with the Common Good,

[..]

Indeed, this vital movement of humanity’s young (and not so young) is in search of common places where they can engage in meaningful activities for the common good, yet, the reality of the current economy often means they are precarious, they cannot afford urban rents that are driven by real estate speculation, and often real estate prices make the mutualization of the workplace a very difficult endeavour.

[..]

So the new movement would benefit from Your Assistance, and I am therefore making this proposal and appeal.

Why not think about the repurposing of unused Church property, for precisely the recreation of a moral and ethical economy? Why not create mechanisms for the creation of common hackerspaces, makerspaces, co-working spaces, where the common endeavours can take place in a meaningful and spiritualized space?

[..]

Dr. Spangenberg also mentions a way forward which is similar to the proposed approach of mutualized working spaces, but expanded to the scale of a village:

You can’t cooperate ‘freely’, if you need permission, or if you need to pay for intellectual property. The free culture movement directly addresses this question, and wants to create a culture, and the conditions for such a culture to emerge, by diminishing artificial barriers to such cooperation.

I’ve always worked with the flow of information and used the technology in that it conveys information. It is never the technology itself that interested me, it is the human flows.

In the 90s, when the Internet was not yet the web, I was fascinated by the fact that human brains can communicate in real time and delayed time without asking anyone’s permission. I thought it was going to change the world.

[..]

I took a two year sabbatical. I went to live in Thailand and I read for two years.

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There is a good example in Bologna, Bologna The Regulation for the Care and Regeneration of Urban Commons, which allows citizens to propose improvements collective neighborhood:

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These communities interest me more than the combative communities. We obviously need to fight, but the most important is to change production methods. Create political struggles around that, yes, but first you must create a social power. When the world of work is declining, the only thing that can replace him, it is the world of the ordinary.

?

For me, revolutions are organic. Lots of things are happening in society, but it is not known when they will emerge. Who could have predicted the Occupy movement? It is therefore not focus on these breakpoints. We must build, build, build, build networks, organize to be ready for when chaos occurs, you must already have the solutions.

I believe that after the crisis we are currently experiencing, capitalism can possibly reorganize to a new cycle if it integrates ecology and peer-to-peer. But if it does not include, if not reform, the coming period is likely to be a continual chaos. In my opinion, we must expect a great crisis in 2030-2040. I’m not the only one to say, many parameters converge, including the depletion of natural resources, climate, biodiversity … For now, these problems are still independent, but at some point, they will cause each other.

The good news is we still have a little time to prepare.

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ouisharefest 2015 – interview

How peer2peer will change the world

stage transition.. looking for something today that could change the world

too busy – traveling talking

there’s something about being an activist is that its infinite

so.. the thing.. that could change the world… mechanism that perpetuates that ongoingness…. deep enough

while i’m reading this i’m thinking 1\ how smart Michel is.. how in tune with what we’ve done in past .. what’s happening now.. et al.. 2\ perhaps how much verbiage/talking/language is getting in the way of the change we seek.. ie: the need to leapfrog to modeling it.. w/out the needs for words.. if we have the means to really change things – which i believe we do – then why frame it in terms of elections and even competition/cooperation… why not give ourselves a ginormous do-over.. and create the language/communication for that.. fresh. everyday.

not against the knowledge in this piece… sounds spot on. but what if we don’t need it for the change we seek. like – we all just move to a different country.. start fresh.

‘Netarchical’ forms of peer-to-peer infrastructure (net-archy meaning the hierarchy of the network) do not reinvest their profits. Rather, they are a kind of parasitical force contributing to a value crisis in which more and more “use value” is created by the people themselves–even as scarce monetization is exclusively captured by the owners of the network platform. My work is largely predicated on the view that we need to look beyond netarchical organizations and toward platform cooperatives, data cooperatives, and new forms of ethical entrepreneurship.

[..]

The important difference is that in peer production, real commons are created by communities that have a huge influence on the production process. By comparison, in the sharing economy we have the instantiation of “peer-to-peer market transactions” through private platforms, which frankly atomize individuals by denying ownership or control of the platform, and inherently isolating people from one another through secret algorithms, etc. .

[..]

on partner state: The eminent example is Co-Bologna in Italy and its Regulation for the Care and the Regeneration of the Urban Commons. This turns the state logic around by enabling civic groups in local neighborhoods to work on urban improvement themselves, while the state (federal and municipal) supports this bottom-up process through financing or other infrastructural support.

i’m less involved in the confrontational spaces.. and more in spaces working on the long term..

we need more convergence… no doubt we’re mobile.. but not staying.. outlasting the mobilization

the new types of institutions are not there yet..

important for stability and longevity

7 min – in terms of infrastructure.. i think we need to be in spaces like twitter and facebook – because so many are there… but i think there is a 3rd way… loomio.. weiser.. totally open source…collaborative… not competing w/fb et al… because they have pluses..

9 min – 2 things happening at same time.. mainstream going bad… counter reaction.. not that dark.. such a broad steam of people resisting and constructing alternatives… if we focus on the 2nd..

11 min – so many people are doing things.. ie: netherlands… but most aren’t political about it.. but practical…. ie: i want good food

13 min – 1\ mode of production that is open and free 2\ sustainable physical manufacturing 3\ value distribution.. is it fair- we need to synergize these three things..

so that when we are in the square.. we have something to propose… we have working alternatives.. that just need to scale up.. difficulty in scaling up and integrating.. but they already exist..

15 min – traditional politics is about public vs private… this pendulum has been going on for years.. what we didn’t have was this notion of commons… ie: instead of producing to make profit .. you produce as is needed…

this alternative.. based on the commons.. communities creating shared resources…

19 min – how can we disembed commons based peer production from the accumulation of capital.. you have to squarely confront the issue of livelihood… ie: not every one can volunteer all the time…

we need an emancipatory alternative that says.. these things are great but need to be embedded in new ways for livelihood.. if we create our own coops…. our own social economy entities.. then we can start closing that loop…

i’m a commoner… around it we create all kinds of service… that people are willing to pay for eventually…

? why pay

how to link things that are unlinked…. ie: chamber of the commons…

on the need for incubators.. models… this takes time.. but it’s happening..

What if there is no meaning to life, but the meaning that we give to it?

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The very question of the meaning of life has little meaning for me today. I am fully energized and ‘fed’, through my engagement with the multitude of others who are all working concurrently to solve the major systemic issues that are generated by the current dominant system, which combines pseudo-abundance, a false sense of the infinity of the resources provided by nature, thereby destroying the biosphere; and artificial scarcity by imposing limits on human cooperation in science, technology and culture. Peer production does the opposite, so how do we get from the emergence of many grassroots communities, coordinated through global knowledge commons, to systems that can create livelihoods around this, and how can it evolve from the state of emergence, to a full social and economic system?

Cyber Philosopher Michel Bauwens worked at a high level at Belgacom. Until he got a burn-out and slow down wanted to do. “My burnout was useful to come out different.”

On his 42nd Michel had a midlife crisis. ” I still had not done what I really wanted .” He also had a terrible year behind. His father died, his mother had Alzheimer’s disease and his love affair went wrong. “If everything goes wrong at once you have to remember everything. “

Now Michel is a different man. ”

My burnout took to come out differently. But something you can only say after the fact…Every setback gives resilience to deal with it differently.

The thing here is that this makes it very cheap to make a community and supply it with infrastructure to manage interactions on a platform,

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Ostrom’s key insight: people are good at making up rules to deal with novel situations. They can in this way self-govern (or self-regulate). …

Yet the Ostrom model hinged on small groups, because cheap talk and costly punishment. The problem was that they didn’t scale. Today, traditional issues related to shared common-pool resources—such as the free rider problem or the tragedy of the commons—could be addressed with the implementation of blockchain-based governance, through the adoption of transparent decision-making procedures and the introduction decentralised incentives systems for collaboration and cooperation.

The transparent and decentralised nature of the blockchain makes it easier for small and large communities to reach consensusand implement innovative forms of self-governance

we need to look past the technological change dynamics and the marginal substitution between existing institutional economic forms and realise that what is actually being reinvented here are economies themselves.

indeed.

An economy is a designed order, as an intended outcome of a firm or a government-planned economy. A catallaxy is an emergent order that results from the divergent goals of many different individuals interacting within a market exchange.

? – why must they/we converge.. and why must it be w/in exchange..

Hayek meant this as a critique of government central planning: you can plan an economy, but never a catallaxy.

agree with that… but also think we need to let go of assumption of market ness… any kind of measurement of transactions.. rather.. let’s coordinate them… w/o any mathematical/or whatever agenda..

What connects Hayek (what decentralization does), Ostrom (how local govt forms), and Buchanan (decision mechs) is that they were all focused, in very different ways, on the problem of how communities coordinate to choose in groups, and thereby create economies. They were all obsessed with social rules, and with rules for making and choosing rules.

The blockchain is the secure, verifiable, trustless (i.e. cryptographically secure) mechanism to record the actions upon the rules.

And right there you have it. The blockchain is doing what prices do in markets, what commands do in firms, and what laws do in governments. It is providing a clear and unambiguous public signal, as a coherent rule-system, to coordinate private action

perhaps that’s not what our souls crave.. perhaps that’s blocking the rhythm of us.. ie: perhaps prices/commands/laws.. are what’s keeping us from us.. so finding something to do it better..? why would we ..?

The new economics of the blockchain is that it is a new technology for making new economies. That’s less like the invention of steam or electricity, and more like the invention of private property or government.”

That adds an overhead of ridiculous complexity for something which needs to follow the principle of pushing intelligence and agency to the edges rather than center.

exactly… to any consensus or measurement or validation..

Bitcoin and blockchains are built around authorized tokens embedded in every transaction/record, which embeds unnecessary complexity and limitations for scalability into every interaction. Tokens are not what makes a decentralized system work,

exactly..

cryptographic signatures and self-validating data structures are.

i don’t know… why does anything have to be validated..? ie: if we stop to validate.. that takes our time.. and then others spend time looking at our validation and us at there’s. perhaps better to just let the tech/blockchain.. leave a trail (unvalidated in the sense we use/know today)

But today we have self-validating data structures like hash-chains and Merkle-trees which leave evidence of tampering by breaking structural integrity, cryptographic hash, or counterparty signatures when the data is altered. This makes it possible to distribute the storage and management of data and ensure that the people holding it can’t tamper with it.

what if we make this.. not even about not being able to tamper with.. and more about.. not having a desire to tamper with.. ie: gershenfeld something else law. seems we’d save a ton of time/energy with that. (may sound crazy impossible but isn’t trying to resist tampering moreso..? – starfish ness…)

you could be an authority to show your own account balance, yet not be able to tamper with your account history.

imagine the time/energy saved… if we weren’t dealing with any type of account balance. perhaps we just try.. a nother way.. with no measuring of transactions.

What you need to distribute in a system of collective intelligence is the ability to distribute reliable processing according to shared agreements. *Consensus then becomes something used for to ensure the integrity of the processing, rather than the medium upon which processing is executed. This approach, lets you confirm that your copy of the process is valid, so you can rely on it to work according to the agreed upon rules and proceed authoritatively without having to wait for the rest of the network to validate, verify and update itself with your state.

*or perhaps consensus is no longer needed.. tech connects us.. rather than makes us efficiently decide the same thing/rule. we have the capability for 7 billion curiosities dancing together daily. why would we hold that up with consensus. 95% of dna junk dna (entropy ness et al) if we spend time labeling/deciding it so…. perhaps instead we spend our energy listening to and being its rhythm.

One of the beautiful outcomes from this is such a massive reduction in the processing and storage requirements that it becomes feasible to run a full node on a mobile phone instead of requiring specialized mining hardware.”

3 min – i took a 2 yr sabbatical to find out what i could do today to change society.. decided to spend 2 years reading about phase transitions…

4 min – one system i used… adam fisk… structure of social life: basically at all times… 4 main ways to allocate resources..

1\ equality matching – the gift econ… mostly in tribal/clan based societies..thru mutual obligation.. give something .. creates a debt… then they want to give back more in order to restore the equality

4\ communal shareholding – basically what we do in the family.. not charging kids for what you do for them.. don’t expect anything directly in return… a whole.. family seen as a totality… worked in early history w/small nomadic bands..

8 min – another .. re enforces this frame – the structure of world history kapolyani – mode

a: reciprocity of gift (nation)

b: ruling and protection

c: commodity exchange

d: transcends/integrates other 3

9 min – he says reason capitalism is so strong is it’s 3 in 1 modes of production

10 min – until now – talking about multi modal world… but exist under a dominant mode…

12 min – if you look at transitions..

following Yochai‘s ideas about peer production.. a new modality which is marginal.. moving to the center of value creation.. thru that .. we now have commoners

transition.. trying to subsume market and state to its own values.. one study by tina demoore – belgium commons historian.. ie: i always assumed commons were always there.. no .. emerged in 12 cent in 70 yrs time.. guilds emerged in 70yrs time..11 cent..

16 min – so many people involved in change today.. you do not see the map.. just the red arrows..

18 min – seed forms coming together as capitalism

19 min – no value being created in civil society.. it’s what they do w the surplus from the market… money has to come from market.. way we see value creation under capitalism

value creation in peer production it’s contributors contributing to a commons…

20 min – allocation of resources doesn’t happen through market pricing nor hierarchical decision making.. but through massive mutual coordination – stigmergy.. you know what to do because you receive signals from your peers

21 min – netarchical capitalism – a transvestment of value from one mode to another

22 min –

1\ productive communities

2\ people in this sphere are more happy than people who are not.. ie: would continue doing what they do w/o getting paid

31 min – on capital and regeneration requirements.. reciprocity based license.. new form of property 1/4 founder, funders, users, workers…. et al… everybody can use our knowledge.. but if want to make money.. have to get license… to reintro in market.. market of reciprocity.. ie: las indias, enspiral, …

33 min – for benefit structure that manages… looks like ngo (legally is) but doesn’t work like one… ie: have a problem in world.. healthcare in war zones.. send funds there..; fundraise for wikipedia knowledge… all contributions there.. so a social signaling system that allows people to matched knowledge/skills

1:04 – wikipedia growth stops after the construction of deletionism… when decided to have an abundant.. editors know less than contributors… w/in day or two .. 15 codes… if not full time… and have support.. you lose… open source ethos.. has been severely damaged.. so entrenched not going to change anymore.. so wikipedia will probably become more professional

1:07 – if you only depend on volunteering – you have to create livelihoods..

1:09 – i think only way to get to sustainable society is through peer production… ie: w market.. forced to buy.. mutualize knowledge/infrastructure.. everybody knows it all.. i claim we can have … 20/80… 89% less matter/energy to produce 80% less of what we have now.. it’s through the knowledge sharing we can save world from destruction.. for me.. this infrastructure is really vital……

3 min – p2p – research people practicing p2p production, governance and ownership .. compared to capitalism and cog capitalsim.. a footnote to marx – capitalism creates system w new class of workers.. socializes production.. and then they take over and change production…

12 min – 1500 began commodification

13 min – cog capitalism: 1\ value is extracted no longer direct in physical production but through knowledge control of physical production.. 2\ shift of financialization.. exploitation through credits more than labor.. 3\ privatization of knowledge… control of knowledge through ip (internet protocol)

14 min – to me cog capitalism – mckenzie wark – hacker manifesto… amazing book – makes thesis which i think is mistaken.. he says between hacker (uses knowledge but doesn’t own means of production) and vectoral (control new means of production) class.. i think this is exactly what has change today… 1973 – microchip…basis of neoliberalism.. this first phase of networks.. controlled by large companies.. which starts re organizing global supply chains… since 1993 – browser, www,.. new situation.. creators of knowledge own own means of production… some call this platform capitalism.. i would call this netarchical capitalism…

19 min – networks which allow p2p communication/relationship… permissionless… so can self-organize… about all value production.. not tech determinism..more.. a new feel of possibility…

20 min – people who find/develop tech.. have own agency/control…

21 min – ie: finland 90% want to engage in sustainable design..that’s ..their agency their social imaginary.. however.. only 2% can engage in that… more and more young people have diff value system… so have agency.. and a social imaginary.. which is not compatible with command and control.. and profit.. if you have no affordance.. no choise.. if have affordance.. can exit that system… to invest your imaginary in new solutions….

22 min – so not about doing what you want.. but about wanting to do what you want and then fighting/influencing the reality you encounter….produsers – with s

24 min – netarchical capitalism: the shift from capitalism that is based on negating neg externalities to a form of capitalism that is based on exploiting pos externalities.. a big shift… historically capitalism has destroyed the commons.. by enclosure of the land… a machine for enclosure… now.. googles/facebooks do opposites.. they are empowering… promoting/using commons.. and they capture value from the commons.. ie: uber.. where peers create value.. not paying wages… become hyper competitive..

31 min – so what is p2p tech inside netarchical capitalsim: a form of tech which is p2p only at the front end.. everything in back end under control of owners of platform….

32 min – 2nd form… distributed platform… ie: bitcoin.. based on profit mode.. make easy to create coins in beginning and algo makes it more and more difficult to create.. so value of coins go up.. so people who buy early can sell to others and extract rent… for speculative activity..

today.. there is no local anymore… always a global aspect… on using global for the local…

40 min – capacity for global org.. ie’s of it happening all over.. invisible.. but huge.. music and half way houses… on beaches…

41 min – an argument that douglas rushkoff (life encorporate) is making… renaissance… of centralized thinking/orgs.. today coming out of that… associated with p2p .. social features related to medieval..

43 min – on distributed (individual can connect to anyone w/o permission – hubs exist but voluntary) vs decentralized (diff power systems that compete.. still centralized w/in.. ie: airport system in u.s. – have to use given hubs)…centralized (from top)

45 min – if want value shift to occur.. need to org at global level (slide): sustainability, openness, solidarity… problem is w/in each of these there is fragmentation..

47 min – so we are creating events/actions/dialogues to create bridges through those system responses… free (to share) fair systems..

48 min – open source circle (waste of one system becomes production of another) econ.. once have open.. circle becomes natural...

50 min – stigmergy – what do we need to do for physical production..? we need to translate stimergy.. to supply chains and accounting

52 min – every big shift has been marked by a big shift in how we see accounting..

55 min – issue.. same situation as 28th cent.. more capital than workers.. so craft have to rent machines from capital et al… and sell back to capital.. no commodified labor… people can’t survive on own.. so have to move to cities…

58 min – what needs to be .. 1\ coop econ needs to converge and support … or … commoners need to create open coops… maintains self as community… 2\ avoid seepage in value capture… copyleft..(hacked system to allow sharing of knowledge) .. the more communism the license.. the more capitalistic the practice….. move from liberal licenses to social licenses.. ie: to each according to contribution

1:04 – a commons friendly market form… a pure stigmergic sphere… using code/knowledge/design… around that open coop system.. reproducing these shared resources… moving capacity for mutual coordination from immaterial to material… in a mutual coord econ

1:07 – commons transition plan – have to influence political forces.. ie: flock in ecuador ie: ed/civic/et al commons.. for each of these.. look at enabling practices.. ie: if don’t have open text books.. can’t have this..

ugh

1:09 – immaterial: ecuador has free software decree

1:10 – create open accreditation systems… govt allows to hire people who have gone through that pipeline

ugh

1:11 – sanders/corbyn – love them.. but if they win.. will just do what we should have been doing 30 yrs ago.. no plans for commons..

What this tell us is that actual property-based and law-based protections are absolutely vital for the commons, and hence, the commons should not be counter-posed in a simple way to private or state property as non-property, but rather as a new form of property.

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Hence, the commons is also property, while at the same time being some form of non-property. In the same way, the collective territorial common good in a commons economy, requires a state, that is at the same time a non-state because it is no longer separate from society. Commons property belongs to a collective or to all, and in this sense may be non-property, but it is at the same time ‘property’ because the constituent parts can be withdrawn.

Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is open-source; its design is public, nobody owns or controls Bitcoin and everyone can take part. Through many of its unique properties, Bitcoin allows exciting uses that could not be covered by any previous payment system.

All current cryptocurrencies require you to buy the coins, either through mining or through exchanges. This gives the advantage to those who already have capital and mining equipment, and can afford risky investments. FairCoin is the first project where the coins are not bought but rather distributed equally between everyone who wants them regardless of their current financial status, and promotes equality.

FairCoin is a crypto currency like Bitcoin. It is a descendant of Peercoin, meaning the block generation is done by PoW/PoS hybrid.

isn’t that saying they (ni and coop commons) are all tied in to same thing..?

ie: a nother way via hosting life bits (both/all to me -which seems the point.. has to be something that takes in everything.. commoning wouldn’t work without each individual being authentic.. and each individual won’t be authentic without coop/community working/attaching..)

add bee page…Loretta Lynch…
how I feel.. ie w Michel…
no one asking me anything ..assuming I don’t know…
when I ask them… it’s based on assumed languages/verbiages/defns… where wikipedia (and hopefully hosting life bits) really does well.. linking all the words to intended meaning

33 min – potential of commons based peer production.. solves problems on condition that we create generative business models around it.. then.. sustainability issue.. so blockchain..but not part of solution.. part of problem..

34 min – moving to open contrib system.. puts things back on right way.. if we have commons we have no artificial scarcity..

39 min – what pricing is for markets..what decision making is for planning.. mutual coord becomes thing for commons..

light global.. heavy local…

40 min – not just utopia.. a matter of survival..

last suggestion.. revolutionary …can we do open blockchain based supply chains.. bring down transactions costs.. of massive production on global scale..

48 – young people revolting against hierarchical institutions.. managerial class give young people rock n roll.. but exploit manufacturing to global south.. result.. surplus value no longer produced in global south.. but captured by financial institutions and not coming back.. solutions.. surplus goes back to people actually creating it..

blockchain can save 20 bill a year in infrastructure cost and tap 5 bill ..3rd tribe.. humanity.. maybe we may need blockchain to do better/faster/cheaper

perhaps to help us disengage from measuring transactions.. validating people.. perhaps then we’d get the leap to betterness our souls crave..

44 min – meritocracy

47 min – balance between inclusion and efficiency.. have to be at boundary between commons and market.. that’s where we can put in fairness that balances out meritocracy.. this is something that is understudied.. the counterantidisemidiation group.. what tools can we insert to create that fairness… this is the kind of thing we have to work on..

50 min – embedding rules for equity in infrastructure.. something we don’t think about today.. we just build hoping things will get ok and they don’t.. a good ie: enspiral.. because have commitment to … equity ness

54 min – enspiral even though wants to do good and does.. wants to support community.. ie: city is now key area where this is happening… cities acting very actively.. ie: neighborhood collectives to impose policies… city becomes a partner city a for benefit association.. here’s what could happen – imagine best neighborhoods with smartest people… where poor neighborhoods .. don’t have time to do this.. so if just leave it like that.. so still need holistic mech’s..

The key challenge ahead, said Bauwens, is finding ways for commoners to make a living from supporting the commons, rather than just volunteering their time. The model for commons-based peer production has been proven in such open source innovations as the Wikispeed car and the Wikihouse design plans. But people still need to earn a living and “capital for the commons” still needs to be raised to finance collaborative production. This is the next frontier.

perhaps.. next frontier/key challenge.. is finding a nother way for 7 bn people to live w/o making/earning a living..

been working on a means for all of us to leap (for blank’s sake) to a nother way to live (that entails all of us so as not to overburden any of us – ie: model rather than write/speak/et-al.. so model.. begs a design that spreads on its own.. exponentially fast.. making writing/speaking/marketing/violent-revolution about it.. irrelevant)

assumes that people are good (rat park for science of people in schools ness et al).. and that we don’t know that because we haven’t ever given it/us a fair try.. ie: always doing partial ness

history of trust.. started in 1\ small nomadic bands.. then settled in 2\ sedentary tribes.. trust because you know each other.. and unit is less than 150.. that’s peer to peer..

why do people behave here.. you know you’re being watched…

27 min – if in 3\ very big society… why behave..? if religious.. someone is watching us all – second big period of trust

28 min – 4\ then nation state.. and start talking about big brother.. state is watching us

w/internet .. 5\ return to nomadic structures/lifestyles… people liberated from ie: one job for life..we have tech – internet – which brings down price for sharing.. interacting.. more and more linked to global/virtual territories.. based on affinity/values..

30 min – i see blockchain in this context.. scaling small group dynamics at global scale.. we can make very complex things w networks.. that govts/big corps can’t do on own.. by allowing small groups to coord.. on global scale

yes..

31 min – i see block chain as part of that.. universal ledger.. we use one accounting system everyone can see.. instituting that p2p trust level..

32 min – also blockchain.. very linked to accounting system.. societies have always had accounting systems..

? really..?

not buying that..

33 min – basis of state based systems is a new form of accounting..

34 min – we’ve reached end of road of extracted value machine.. so a social dislocation going very fast..

35 min – other part – climate change et al.. so we need to transfer to generative approach.. so working w/generative coalitions.. stuff that matters.. ie: enspiral/loomio.. open source/shared….

37 min – moving from linear supply systems.. to shift in accounting systems.. to open

for that.. going to need . . a universal ledger.. so where blockchain comes in

39 min – so need blockchain to create trust.. ie: assumption of making us all equal traders.. but it’s a monopoly based on scarcity.. so today bitcoin more unequal than our current money

41 min – ending up with system.. where everyone is a little capitalist w each other… ie: airbnb good.. if you have an asset.. ie: house.. but… 90% of airbnb are big orgs.. so 10% of people… great .. but real issue.. what happens when you don’t have an asset.. prices/rents go up.. and people w/o assets will have to leave neighborhood.. this happened in barcelona

43 min – if system only based on assets/trading..then property based democracy.. so design of tech matters.. whether you choose 100% market or mixed.. you have to design blockchain diff

46 min – other way is p2p markets.. enable people to trade.. share econ is misleading.. no sharing.. we call this .. platform coops.. in market place there is no commons.. but platform could be the commons.. we’re all trading.. but we could own the trading platform ourselves.. create.. like an uber coop.. types of drivers.. co own paltform/app..

47 min – debates/issues in blockchain type community.. distributed autonomous org.. through smart contracts.. rules.. then start working together on global scale w people you don’t know.. problem is .. these people don’t believe in democracy/governance.. so no mech for that.. so.. at some point.. some individual stole 75 bn dollars.. now a problem.. because if don’t have governance… then only choice left is authoritarian..

not a problem if no money..

and then have a nother option.. via a mech to facil curiosity/people..

1:23 – if we design our systems based on such a deformed view of what humans beings are then we also make people behave like that.. and that’s the danger..

This project in the city of Ghent, where Michel Bauwens and the P2P Foundation will undertake a ‘commons research’ project next spring, is based on the cooperation of design students, experts, and citizen participation: This cal was originally published here. Photo by blavandmaster

Our proposal at the P2P Foundation is threefold at the micro-economic stage: first, we need to build productive communities around our commons, and declare our value sovereignty; this means deciding to distribute value differently, ‘generatively’; this requires a second step, creating generative entrepreneurial coalitions, so that we are commoners adding to the commons, but also cooperators making a living. And this requires also of course building meta-networks, between them.

Obviously, this takes time, and it took capital 400 years to consolidate itself with all the institutions it needed. The problem of course, is: we don’t have that time, but perhaps, because of the acceleration of learning through mutual networks, we can achieve it in 40.

?

[..]

I follow the traditional definition of the commons, i.e. a shared resource, managed by a community according to its own norms. There are plenty of physical commons in the Global South, i.e. 85% of Africans still depend on them, less so in the West, but there are in fact more than we think. In Galicia, Spain, one third of the land is still commons and run by commons associations. But today, we see the explosion of digital commons (shared knowledge resources are the basis of one sixth of GDP in the US economy), and urban commons. There has been a tenfold increase of citizen initiatives in the Flanders in the last ten years, and a similar exponential explosion in the Netherlands, and many of these initiatives involve creating commons as part of their practice. Guy Standing’s book on the precariat, has documented the deep linkage of precarious workers with networks characterised by commons.

[..]

we need to build new layers of deliberative democracy and participation, on top of improved representative democracies

[..]

Representative democracy needs to exist to cover wider territorial and functional units, but we are at the threshold where mere representation is no longer enough, and so this is the time to augment it with new techniques, to be experimented with, and this may involve participatory, deliberative, liquid feedback type, lotteries etc.

oh shoot..

[..]

You know the analogy of imaginal cells in the caterpillar; the cells who identify with the caterpillar are in panic, because the system is dying, but the cells who identify with the butterfly and carry its DNA know that it is a transition. Similarly today, we see seed forms emerging to solve the systemic crises, and the P2P Foundation is dedicated to observing them, analysing them and to think through where this can lead us, and be a catalyst for that change.

P2P is also a technological infrastructure that makes the generalization and scaling up of such relations possible;

P2P thus enables a new mode of production and exchange;

P2P creates the potential for a transition to an economy that can be generative towards people and nature.

We believe that these four aspects will profoundly change human society

[..]

the P2P relational dynamic — strengthened by particular forms of technological capacities — may become the dominant way of allocating the necessary resources for human self-reproduction, and thus replace capitalism as the dominant form.

[..]

On the one side, for example, we can consider the capitalism of Facebook, Uber or Bitcoin. On the other, we can look at the commons-oriented models of Wikipedia or free/open-source software projects.

[..]

That said, we argue that as long as peer producers or commoners cannot engage in their own self-reproduction outside of capital accumulation, it remains a proto-mode of production, not a full one.

[..]

the new class of commoners cannot rely on capitalist investment and practices. They must use skillful means to render commons-based peer production more autonomous from the dominant political economy. E

we should strive to escape the situation in which capitalists co-opt the commons, and head towards a situation in which the commons capture capital, and make it work for its own development.

This proposed strategy of reverse cooptation has been called “transvestment” by telekommunists Dmytri Kleiner and Baruch Gottlieb. Transvestment describes the transfer of value from one modality to another. In our case this would be from capitalism to the commons. Thus transvestment strategies aim to help commoners become financially sustainable and independent. Such strategies are being developed and implemented by commons-oriented entrepreneurial coalitions such as the Enspiral network or Sensorica.

we need to organise ourselves so that the ‘value’ of our work can be re-invested in our livelihoods, communities and resources. This is why it can never be a purely defensive game, or even trying to get more of the piece of the pie, but it requires a reorganisation of our modes of production and exchange.

mainly.. stop measuring them..

[..]

Free knowledge is hugely important in this context, because under capitalism, we treat rare resources as if they were infinite, and we treat abundant resources, as if they were scarce. So we destroy the planet, but withhold the knowledge necessary to solve the problems thus created.

[..]

commons work is driven ‘intrinsically’, and so there is a danger, that incentivising may actually ‘crowd out’ commoning behaviour to replace it with competition for scarce tokens.

The problem is that after 200 years of the second model, the primary areas of our life, like school and work, are not democratic, and so the basic problem is that we expect democratic behaviour from people (citizens / residents) who have basically never exercised it. This is one reason I favour the commons model, because it is based on self-governing communities, so it is a training school for democracy like no other.

OSB: When you say ‘the commons model’ what exactly do you mean? Where can we see a commons model acting as “a training ground for democracy like no other”?

MB: I follow the traditional definition of the commons, i.e. a shared resource, managed by a community according to its own norms. There are plenty of physical commons in the Global South, i.e. 85% of Africans still depend on them, less so in the West, but there are in fact more than we think. In Galicia, Spain, one third of the land is still commons and run by commons associations. But today, we see the explosion of digital commons (shared knowledge resources are the basis of one sixth of GDP in the US economy), and urban commons. There has been a tenfold increase of citizen initiatives in Flanders in the last ten years, and a similar exponential explosion in the Netherlands, and many of these initiatives involve creating commons as part of their practice. Guy Standing’s book on the precariat, has documented the deep linkage of precarious workers with networks characterised by commons.

The innovation of peer production moreover, which is now actively pursued in the Italian model promoted byLabGovand LabSus, is the realisation that *not everybody has to decide on everything, we simply have no time to be involved in everything at the personal level, but to give privileged space to the already engaged citizens, with the appropriate control mechanisms by other stakeholders, including ‘society’ as a whole.

is it that *not everybody has to decide everything..? or that we don’t really have all the decision we keep thinking we have.. because i don’t believe in rep ing.. (that’s why i’m reading this interview.. the title)..

[..]

we need to build new layers of deliberative democracy and participation, on top of improved representative democracies, which can also include new lottery systems for such presentation, as for example presented in

democracy has to be first of all a practice that is integrated in our lives, not something just like an election, which is like electing which elite is going to govern us (election = elite, both words have the same roots, and the greeks saw elections as the aristocratic principle and the lottery as the democratic principle); the commons, defined as shared resources that are governed by communities according to their own rules and norms, are a good way to achieve this, i.e. as we learn and work, we practice democracy.

huge

*Representative democracy needs to exist to cover wider territorial and functional units, but we are at the threshold where mere representation is no longer enough, and so this is the time to **augment it with new techniques, to be experimented with, and this may involve participatory, deliberative, liquid feedback type, lotteries etc.

*does it..?

perhaps if we experiment with hosting-life-bits.. augmentation of rep ness will become irrelevant..

You know the analogy of imaginal cells in the caterpillar; the cells who identify with the caterpillar are in panic, because the system is dying, but the cells who identify with the butterfly and carry its DNA know that it is a transition. Similarly today, we see seed forms emerging to solve the systemic crises, and the P2P Foundation is dedicated to observing them, analysing them and to think through where this can lead us, and be a catalyst for that change.

the original Flemish title for the book is “De Wereld Redden”, which translates to “Save the World” in English

the following short chapter summaries were written for the purpose of presentation, and are not translated book excerpts. An English translation of the book has not yet been produced

Save the world is based on a 12hr interview by former journalist Jean Lievens with Michel Bauwens, and is divided into six ch

Chapter 1: The Economy of P2P – based on passionate production..has tendency to outperform traditional businesses. .. new form of collab, sharing en producing

Chapter 2, the politics of P2P – find progressive partners to collab on building a program which defends/promotes interests of immaterial/material commons..role of state..needs to transform from welfare to partner

Chapter 3: P2P and spirituality – Tribal religious forms like animism and shamanism didn’t have developed hierarchical structures, as they arose within a social framework of egalitarian relationships relying on kinship

Chapter 4: the Philosophy of P2P – truth needs to be constructed contributively, and every object needs to be approached from as many angles and perspectives as possible

Chapter 6: a Biography of Michel Bauwens – evolution of his thinking about social change and seeing P2P as leverage for achieving this change

Appendix; The Story of the book – Michel Bauwens and Jean Lievens met at the Free University of Brussels in the latter half of the nineteen-seventies, where they were active in the student movement. More than three decades later, the ideas of P2P brought them together again. Now in their fifties and confronted with a broken system that threatens the survival of the human species, they consider the transition towards a P2P society to be the way out of the present crisis

excerpts

postface

In this sense we urgently need formidable thinkers who are able to both keenly analyse the current state of affairs and to develop concepts and resources that facilitate the collective construction of a different world. In this book Michel Bauwens vigorously fulfils this task

His argument, which is, in turn, provocative and stimulating, is that the way people relate to one another in horizontal networks facilitates a form of self-organisation, without authority, in the creation of common value that is more productive than can be achieved by private companies or official organisations. A good example is Wikipedia, the product of the efforts of millions of citizens across the world that has rendered privately edited encyclopedias redundant.

on fb being about *exchange value: profit.. “**Why not consider social media a form of public service?” He does not share the postmodern vision of knowledge workers guaranteeing themselves a career by virtue of their talent and their laptops. Even if a flexible career is aligned with peer production, ***such a society can only be stable with a guaranteed basic income.

This vision of a post-capitalist future enables the prospect of a movement away from a model where the market price dominates, as is the case today, towards a model where sharing in-common *has more weight. While we are currently working in organisations that operate in a system based on competition, this is a vision of a system in which collaboration is the dominant logic and where, in this context, **competition is based on merit.

main alt ..found in the idea of collab commons ..some proposals that are quite recent ..three of them: peer by Michel Bauwens, convivialist by Alain Caillé and common-good by Christian Felber…..philosophy of Bauwens is an integral philosophy based on complexity theory and forms of holism…

economic orientation towards the other cannot be explained using the idea of homo economicus, as this is based on private interests..longing for the other is a value in itself, and as such is always present in our being. The wrong idea of homo economicus could only originate because people are equipotential.

very much mirrors idea of koinonía ..org ing our social system in way which every individual can freely engage capacities/talents for sake of the collective good..econ based on inner motivation..*work must be based on free choice.

Bauwens also acknowledges the basic necessity of hierarchical structures inside organizations, provided that these are based on *meritocratic achievements. Only then can these hierarchies be said to be horizontal

the first five mintes explain how prefigurative patterns find themselves to form substituting eco-systems.

Relaxed and explanatory conversation about the main foundations of the p2p/commons approach:

(I usually don’t like to see myself speaking but I think one is different because of the good conditions in which it took place, a one to one deep conversaation with the brilliant film-maker Ilias Marmaras)

recirculated on the occasion of the ongoing commonsfest in athens

An interview (32 min) on the Commons with Michel Bauwens, November 2014 in Athens.

21 min – to make everyone as a real equal citizen.. maybe consider income as basic right.. because everyone contributes..

or.. sans money (earn a living ness).. because everyone contributes.. even/esp in ways we can’t see..

23 min – today we have an exodus from labor to independent communities.. recreating law.. rules.. now work in micro communities can re think global system.. can come from re imagining/ re connecting w commons law from before..

The above description does not exhaust our interests. For example, we have been struggling quite a bit on the intersection between the commons and the care economy, and the inherent gender inequality of a dominant system which doesn’t recognize vital care as valued contributions, and therefore how to imagine solidarity and welfare systems that can cover the risks of all contributions. For the next three years, I will work with SMart, the fast growing European cooperative and mutualist labour mutual, which has developed working solutions for precarious autonomous workers, by creating salaries with welfare benefits. An important line of investigation for myself will be looking at the welfare systems of tomorrow, i.e. those that are no longer tigthly linked to salaried jobs that require the subordination through labour contracts, but also build rights and benefits around contributions, this includes life-long learning, engagement with care, but also contributions to nonprofit activities and the commons. Will this also include a universal basic income requirement, is one of the possibilities we need to investigate …

So imagine three circles representing the three major societal institutions, but under it, the ecological and social requirements that we all need to make such a system work. I feel we have a good handle on the superstructure, but a lot more work needs to be done on these underlying requirements.

perhaps if superstructure is deep/simple/open enough.. underlying requirements are onglingly worked on by 7bn.. 24/7.. so no more pre req..

ie: time for 7bn to be doing/living/being/working it.. not just a few.. rev of everyday life..

More recently I have been moving my attention to the shift from a redistributive economy (which is extractive of human and natural value and tries to redistribute afterwards) to a pre-distributive economy, and from ecological damage limitation to regenerative practices.

The commons is today the central category of change, i.e. citizens have become directly productive of social value as contributors to the commons, and peer to peer is the key social relationship to enable and scale it beyond the capacities of both market and state.

The best bet is to work with scenarios, and focus on the one we prefer.

While I have nothing against utopias myself, and they may be needed to inspire people with new visions of the possible, I consider my own work to be explicitly not utopian. My method is to look at real-life practices and examples, and when enough weak signals show up to prove it is a real trend, to analyse the underlying logic of these seed forms. It is only from there that I begin visioning exercises about what a society would look like if it would exhibit the same logics at the macro-level.

wondering if we’ll ever get to a nother way to live.. if we keep basing it on what’s already here.. ie: not part\ial.. for (blank)’s sake

and.. since we now have the means (as it could be..) for 7 bn to leap to a nother way to live.. perhaps a revolution (as in instigating utopia everyday) is finally possible for this many (any many) people

After three decades of anti-utopian neoliberalism legitimating itself through capitalist realism, I think a revival in utopian thinking, at least a dose, would actually not be a bad thing.

oh yay

Even commons communities think about themselves first, and not the totality of the ecosystem..t

That is a difficult question. Our strategy is that of a relentless interweaving of projects and people, and to increase the level of understanding and mutual organization.. t.. The idea is that, as the mainstream disintegrates in stages, the alternatives will also strengthen in social and political power and become powerful attractors.

I think there are three powerful ‘currents’ that are converging, consisting of many different movements and projects. One is the movement to share knowledge and things, i.e. both the open source movements but also the genuine ‘sharing’ movements. The second are all the people that are caring for and fighting for the environment and the planet. And finally, the movements for fairness, equality, solidarity, cooperativism.

The challenge is that they all have to come together..t

indeed.. begs a focus/mech deep/simple/open enough for 7bn to resonate with today..

For me, the work we are doing is to provide a possible integrative narrative so that a lot more mutual coordination can occur, which can replace the industrial society narrative of labour vs capital. Right now, all that needs to happen is happening, but at tiny scale, too slowly, and with a huge fragmentation of effort.

The more we can see ourselves in a common story, involved in a convergent structural effort to change the very DNA of our societies, the more we can mutually coordinate and the faster we can grow to the scale needed to tackle the global emergency.

This is a profound aspiration of human beings, even in currently non-egalitarian cultures. I will never forget that the most enthusiastic responses to my ideas were in the indigenous communities of Ecuador..t

12 min video from 2015 – on commons.. ecosystems emerging.. commons at core but still need to make a living.. there’s so much happening you just have to want to see it.. et al..

________

via Michel fb share:

RT @robintransition: “The biggest challenge now is the reactivity that is induced by social media. I have it in my own life. How do you make the space where you can just think? I see that as a big challenge for our society”: @mbauwens https://t.co/TEgRE6EUUH

3 min – we see civil society as some kind of leftover .. when you come home tired..

As long as you think value comes from the market, you’re very limited in what you can do.

4 min – The biggest challenge now is the reactivity that is induced by social media. I have it in my own life. I really have to be careful because you can spend so much time reacting to input. How do you make the space where you can just think? I see that as a big challenge for our society.

this is from another thread on DAOstack, but I think it’s an important insight to avoid confusion in discussions about crypto vs cooperative governance:

my ideas on this are not entirely clear, but bear with me;

“just as there is a difference between trustlessness of the crypto world and the high trust world of cooperativism, there is a difference about what is meant by governance; for many in the crypto world, governance means ‘like the market’, i.e. the ability to work at scale together, ‘without having to know the other person’. It’s all about transactional ease and it represents the libertarian/liberal dream of the marketplace as the place of ultimate self-regulated arbitrage. This is the great advantage of markets is it not, that it ‘liberates people from the drag of community.’ As crypto is so much influenced, consciously and unconsciously, by market theory, many of the solutions it finds for ‘governance’, come from economics (game theory, incentives); but in the higher trust world of cooperativism, we mean something entirely different with governance, i.e. we mean community governance, not in the traditional sense of territorial ‘gemeinschaft’, but in the sense of talking and deciding together in affinity communities. These two aspects of governance are both needed, but should not be confused.”

it’s a complicated hybrid reality; blockchain projects want to incentivize massive coordination and cooperation outside of hierarchical institutional channels, using mostly market incentives, but also relying heavily on open source code bases and community-driven open source dynamics; the two major problems they are having today is that they are often indifferent about wealth inequality, i.e. the power of money,and ecological realities; however within this broad movement you will find projects that intent do inject these social and ecological concerns. Competitive markets are like football, with teams competing with each other; commons-based markets share a large common base ; crypto markets allow for all kinds of non-instititutional entities, like individuals and small informal groups, to cooperate seamlessly on common projects

same day .. new thread

input very welcome:

“The concept of a “Distributed Autonomous Organization/Corporation” is an idealistic outcome of the crypto-tech revolution. Its roots originate in themes on organizational decentralization that were depicted by Ori Brafman in Starfish And The Spider (2007), and ones about “peer production”, aptly described by Yochai Benkler in The Wealth of Networks (2007). But these two themes were recently joined by the advent of cryptocurrency related technologies by Dan Larimer who observed that Bitcoin is the original DAC, and Vitalik Buterin who expanded on that construct by generalizing it further as a DAO, noting that the DAO has “internal capital”. Deregulation of crowdfunding and unbundling of services were two additionally paired themes that added to this combustion, and the whole thing was turbo-charged by a crypto-tech governance layer of technologies and trust-based automations to allow DAOs to “run without any human involvement under the control of an incorruptible set of business rules.”

2 min – m: i had been an activist.. from anger.. when i was young.. it wasn’t working.. so then i adapted to the world but always w a kind of depression underneath.. then i was lucky enough.. that everything went wrong at same time.. because if one thing goes wrong.. can hang onto the others.. so .. what would make truly happy.. i want to change the world.. i liberated that energy.. crisis of integration.. when you can put two things together.. i put more than that.. finding the essential reason i’m here.. i have a prophetic function to do what the world needs.. beyond ego..i have a mission..

4 min – m: because you have this conviction.. you have a diff vision about your problems.. because you have this underlying purpose.. it just drives you.. you just have to follow it..t

13 min – i work way too hard.. that’s dangerous.. we org in life boats.. 2 groups of 6.. 6 months in thailand to read/think.. 6 months in europe.. this kind of pausation i think is what most people need.. when engaged.. it’s not over at 4 every day.. it’s .. when do i stop

16 min – as commoners .. how do we manage the risk of our lives.. (talked about smart and getting paid et al)

fairshare

21 min – commons is good because by defn it’s self governed

23 min – difficulty in the west is the capitalism has completely abolished the commons.. so it’s normal that people don’t realize what the commons are

24 min – i’m sure you have urban commons.. just need to find/connect them.. so suffer from lack of common language..

3 min – 1\ by seeing.. you can adapt your behavior to the others.. so i know what to write for wikipedia.. because i can see what’s missing and i can see the mistakes.. nobody has to tell me.. so this is the first level of coordination..t

imagine starting from within each person each day.. via self-talk as data..

2\ the second level is the market.. we need things that are not renewable that we need resources for..

3\ the third level is for planning.. and this is what the state or the city can do.. ie: need to de carbonize.. a planning imperative.. state and city are enabling/empowering the social cooperation.. that’s what i mean w the partner state

4 min – trying to get you out of the market/state binary and to see the city as a facilitator.. t

The timely political conclusion to be drawn from this is nicely summed up by the authorial collective Tiqqun, who defines the task of cybernetic governance in the era of networks as follows: ‘governing means ensuring the interconnection of people, objects, and machines as well as the free – i.e., transparent and controllable – circulation of information that is generated in this manner.’.t

In Noveck’s approach, the role of the government should be reduced to the role of a facilitator, its primary goal being to establish a ‘platform for coordinating citizen action’ based on the mechanisms of a dedicated feedback logic..t

In Noveck’s model, general participation is reduced to reporting systemic disruptions, whereas participation in decision making is open to only those obtaining the relevant knowledge ..t.. or know-how that might contribute to solving a particular problem.

even if decision making was open to all.. thinking in terms of decision making is as reductionist as anything.. if we were truly free.. most if not all of the things we think we need to make decisions about today would become irrelevant

Moreover, according to Noveck, such ‘citizen experts’ should be listed publicly and ranked according to their individual capacities, in close cooperation with private platforms, such as LinkedIn and Coursera, on which citizens can publicly inform others of their progress, newly awarded certificates and so on..t

imagine if our only label was our daily curiosity.. let’s focus on that data for a while.. let’s just see

Rather, we are dealing with an entirely transformed notion of freedom which is only realized through being potentially regulated when necessary. It is freedom as framed by Stafford Beer: *‘The freedom we embrace must yet be in control.’ Even more straightforward is the manner in which the management cyberneticist continues – the wording is indeed uncannily reminiscent of Parag Khanna’s and, as we will see, Pentland’s: ‘**We have to become efficient in order to solve our problems; and we have to accept the threat to freedom that this entails – and handle it.’.. t

Seen from a political viewpoint that considers individual autonomous judgment as a necessary precondition for self-determined political participation, Pentland’s behavioristic focus on the homo imitans and on adaptable behavior is particularly alarming. Close to what Obama advisor Sunstein has popularized under the rubric of ‘nudging’, that is, a form of choice architecture that seeks to subconsciously influence or push human behavior in ‘more reasonable’ directions, Pentland seeks to influence the interrelations between humans. He distinguishes this ‘peer-to-peer behavior’ from ‘individual behavior’. The former largely rests on adaptation, a term that became extremely popular during the rise of cybernetics as a science (for instance, in the works of W. Ross Ashby and Norbert Wiener).

Pentland wants to shape the social fabric by implementing quantifiable incentives that modify interactions. Such a focus on the network is, according to him, twice as efficient as focusing on an isolated individual..t.. One of Pentland’s experimental examples refers to the attempt to raise the overall activity level of a group during a lazy winter.

To return to the issue of freedom, even though the implementation of choice architectures and the redesign of what Pentland terms ‘the social fabric’ are far from directly determining or immediately violating free choice–

It can be argued that the stylization of digital technology to the ultima ratio of producing allegedly stable, self-settling orders solely based on the mechanisms of algorithmic problem solving, has opened entirely new spheres of influence that will eventually establish what media theorist Roberto Simanowski terms a ‘numerocracy’: a quantified society partly self-regulated through real-time data flows. Correspondingly, Evgeny Morozov speaks of a general tendency towards ‘solutionism’ by which he addresses politics’ increasing reliance on technology solutions and other cybernetic techniques, such as behavioral economics, evaluations and ranking lists, or more generally, the setting of incentives and feedback loops to reinforce regularity

What has to be thought through then, is how the cybernetic reduction of the political notion of equality to the rather contentless notion of equal access, and the perception of the social in the sense of mere connectedness, is complicit with the ways in which democracies today tend to undermine and, eventually, cancel their very own fundaments

‘..The redeeming power of reflection cannot be supplanted by the extension of technically exploitable knowledge.’ – Jürgen Habermas..t

21 min – have to do same way we think about platforms.. ie: social ills from like air bnb and uber.. so.. let’s set platform co-ops.. collectively managed by stakeholder groups stays w shareholders

23 min – i’m personally in favor of bi.. ie: me.. had hard time finding a business model for my work.. guy standing.. and yanis – rent taking.. land value tax.. if do labor.. shouldn’t be taxed.. but if rewarded by work of others.. this is rent.. should be taxed.. use that for commons well fund.. eventually to fund bi.. for people who are *doing the things that need to be done

*who decides that..?

26 min – open source econ has 1\ community 2\ market 3\ foundations.. good analogy how state could be in future

28 min – happening .. we just need to make it more conscious

29 min – ostrom said of commons – it’s multi stakeholder governance

30 min – i think at moment nation state in crisis.. but i think cities.. ie: leagues of cities.. w transition councils.. (mobility, food, habitat).. want more local/fair .. so start funding experimentation.. but underlying infra such be global.. so create global resource repository.. every city can use it and local co-ops can set up on this infra

32 min – people mostly concerned about food.. and food is easiest to do.. ie: ghent

33 min – on my wish list is that i could set up such a project in a city like brussels.. .. to show that this can work.. that we can create meaningful engagement /activity locally.. t

15 min – commons not just a choice.. a necessity..t

22 min – marc: are they really building commons or just what worked for us.. m: the .. ‘it’s my turn’.. mentality can’t work.. it’s too late.. a final breaking of hope

24 min – marc: if that is the problem.. what solutions are we seeing..from arc of over consumption to arc of sustainability m: you find them everywhere.. ie: one in china.. shenzen open source econ at core of their success.. national rule reconstruction movement.. ecosystems.. workers going to villages become the transport of food.. then train youth to do organic farming in countryside.. whole new consciousness.. creates income streams for everyone

27 min – also mumbai.. mit .. center for policy design.. students amazing.. complex analysis.. really critical thinkers.. so less group think.. creative socially.. couple projects 1\ solar labs – gives light at night.. millions of kids reading at night 2\ spoken tutorials 400 000 students using this outside unis.. colleges become members.. and anybody can register thru college.. professionally made by staff of about 80 people right now funded by indian govt and college fee.. get certification.. and then can join colleges

ugh

31 min – 3\ rd chi.. open source computer.. very cheap

32 min – marc: it feels over last 25 yrs there’s been a learning process going on.. how to work together at scale.. are we hitting an inflection point here.. m: i think so.. couldn’t prove this

dang.. learning isn’t the point..

34 min – people know we are stuck

35 min – a vision i have – how do we change the main system.. not only going to happen w seed forms.. an interesting movement.. common good econ movement.. christian felber.. every constitution say econ should serve common good.. to shareholders is not constitutional.. they have 2000 orgs/co’s applying common good balance.. imagine one day strong enough to have constitution convention.. and change complete structure.. every co.. goal is common good.. but co could still preserve selvess.. would have p2p on steroids

39 min – marc: can that happen globally? or locally .. does it have to happen all at once .. m: no i don’t think so i think you need exemplars that can then replicate

an argument that technology is NOT NEUTRAL, but the result of human design and therefore, to the values and interests of human groups

Today, four socio-technical systems are competing for dominance, two of them extractive towards communities and resources, two of them generative. The good news is that there are generative alternatives for the 2 exploitative ones

15 min – anarchical capitalists.. no community/trust.. i’ve been to blockchain conferences.. where they start w.. ‘we can’t trust humans’.. so need contracts.. that we can verify thru tech.. so we trust tech..t

32 min – how this can happen – regen network – eco state protocols.. ie: need more .. (social, eco, whatever..) you agree on a co op state protocol and agree that any can carry this out.. launched/verity/tokenize.. then most political part.. convince institutions to share what they benefit from this.. so would be a systematic way to fun generative activities on any scale